The Crow Girl (9 page)

‘To start with, there’s amphetamines. We’ve found traces in the stomach and in the veins. So he’s either eaten or drunk a lot, but there’s also evidence to suggest that it had been injected as well.’

‘A drug addict?’ She hoped he was going to say yes, because everything would be a whole lot simpler if they were looking for an addict who had died in some drug den, then dried out over the passage of time. They’d be able to write off the case and draw the conclusion that one of the young boy’s drugged-up friends had dumped the body in the bushes in a state of confusion.

‘No, I don’t think so. He was probably injected against his will. The needle marks are fairly random, and most of them wouldn’t even have hit a vein.’

‘Oh, fuck.’

‘Yes, I’m inclined to agree with you there.’

‘And you’re quite sure he wasn’t shooting up himself?’

‘As sure as I can be. But the amphetamines aren’t the most interesting thing. What’s really strange is that he’s also got traces of anaesthetic in his body. More precisely, a substance known as Xylocain adrenalin, which is a Swedish invention from the forties. To start with, AstraZeneca marketed Xylocain as a luxury medicine: Pope Pius XII took it for hiccups, and President Eisenhower was treated with it for hypochondria. These days it’s a standard painkiller, the stuff you get injected into your gums if you ask the dentist for anaesthetic.’

‘OK … I’m not following you now.’

‘Well, this boy hasn’t got it in his mouth, of course, but throughout his body. Bloody weird, if you ask me.’

‘And he’s been severely abused as well?’

‘Yes, he’s taken a lot of beatings, but the anaesthetic would have kept him going. Eventually, after hours of suffering, the drugs would have paralysed his heart and lungs. A slow and horribly painful death. Poor kid …’

Jeanette was feeling dizzy.

‘But why?’ she asked, in the vain hope that Ivo had some sort of reasonable explanation.

‘If you’ll permit me to speculate …?’

‘By all means.’

‘The first thing that came to mind were organised dogfights. You know, two prize dogs fighting until one of them is killed. The sort of thing that sometimes goes on in the suburbs.’

‘That sounds like a hell of a long shot,’ Jeanette said instinctively, repulsed by the macabre thought. But she wasn’t entirely sure that it was. Over the years she had learned not to dismiss even the most unlikely ideas. On many occasions, once the truth was revealed it turned out to be far stranger than any fiction. She thought of the German cannibal who had used the Internet to find a man who was prepared to let himself be eaten.

‘Well, I’m just speculating,’ Ivo Andrić went on. ‘Another idea might sound more plausible.’

‘What’s that?’

‘That he’s been beaten beyond recognition by someone who didn’t stop even though the boy was dying. Someone who dosed him up with drugs and then carried on with the abuse.’

Jeanette felt a memory flicker.

‘Do you remember that ice-hockey player in Västerås, the one who was stabbed about a hundred times?’

‘No, I can’t say that I do. Maybe it was before I came to Sweden.’

‘Yes, it was a while back now. Mid-nineties. It was a skinhead off his head on Rohypnol. The hockey player was openly homosexual, and you know what neo-Nazis think of gays. The skinhead carried on stabbing the dead body way beyond the point when his arm should have cramped up.’

‘Yes, that’s more or less what I’m suggesting. A merciless lunatic full of hate and, well … Rohypnol or anabolic steroids, maybe?’

Jeanette hung up. She was feeling hungry and looked at the time. She decided to give herself a long lunch down in the police headquarters canteen. She’d grab the booth at the far end of the room so she had a chance of being left in peace. The restaurant would be full of people soon, and she wanted to be alone.

Before she sat down with her tray she snatched up a discarded copy of one of the evening papers. Almost at once she realised that the paper’s source in the police department was someone close to her, seeing as the article was based on facts that only someone intimately connected to the case could know. Since she was sure it wasn’t Hurtig, that only left Åhlund or Schwarz.

‘So you’re down here already?’

Jeanette looked up from the paper.

Hurtig was standing beside her, grinning.

‘Is it OK if I join you?’ He nodded to the empty seat opposite her.

‘Are you back already?’ Jeanette gestured to him to sit down.

‘Yes, we got finished an hour or so ago. Danderyd. Some rich bastard in construction with a hard drive full of child porn. Bloody awful.’ Hurtig walked round the table, put his tray down, then sat. ‘The wife went to pieces, and their fourteen-year-old daughter just stood and stared as we arrested him.’

‘Otherwise?’ she asked.

‘Mum called this morning,’ he said between mouthfuls. ‘Dad’s not well, he’s in the hospital up in Gällivare.’

Jeanette put her knife and fork down and stared at him. ‘Is it serious?’

Hurtig shook his head. ‘More like unbelievable. Looks like he got his right hand caught in the circular saw, but Mum said they can probably save most of his fingers. She managed to find them and put them in a bag of ice cubes.’

‘Damn.’

‘But she couldn’t find his thumb.’ Hurtig grinned. ‘The cat probably got it. It’s OK, the right hand would be the best one for this to happen to for Dad. He likes carving and playing the fiddle, and for both of those his left hand is more important.’

Jeanette thought about what she actually knew of her colleague, and had to concede that it wasn’t much.

Hurtig grew up in Kvikkjokk, went to school in Jokkmokk, then high school in Boden. He spent a few years working after that – she couldn’t remember what he did – then, when Umeå University started training police officers, he was in the first group of students. After doing work experience with the police in Luleå he applied for a transfer to Stockholm. Nothing but facts, she thought, nothing more personal than the fact that he lived alone in an apartment on Södermalm. Girlfriend? Maybe.

‘Why’s he in the hospital in Gällivare?’ she said. ‘They still live in Kvikkjokk, don’t they?’

He stopped eating and looked at her. ‘Do you seriously think there’s a hospital there, in a village with about fifty inhabitants?’

‘Is it that small? In that case I get it. So your mum had to drive your dad to the hospital in Gällivare? But that must be a hell of a way.’

‘It’s about two hundred kilometres to the hospital, it usually takes about four hours by car.’

‘Wow,’ Jeanette said, feeling embarrassed at her poor grasp of geography.

‘Yes, it’s not easy. Lapland’s big. Fucking big.’

Hurtig sat in silence for a moment before going on.

‘Do you think it was any good?’

‘What do you mean?’ Jeanette gave him a quizzical look.

‘Dad’s thumb.’ He grinned again. ‘Do you think the cat appreciated it? There can’t be that much meat on an old Lapp bastard’s thumb. What do you think?’

Hurtig is Sami, she thought. Something else I had no idea about. She decided to say yes next time he asked if she wanted to go for a beer. If she was going to be a good boss and not just pretend to be one, it was time she got to know her subordinates.

Jeanette picked up her tray, stood and went to get two cups of coffee. She grabbed a few biscuits and went back. ‘Anything new about the phone call?’

Hurtig swallowed. ‘Yes, I got a report just before I came down here.’

‘And?’ Jeanette sipped at the hot coffee.

Hurtig put his knife and fork down. ‘As we suspected. The call was made from the vicinity of the DN Tower. To be more precise, from Rålambsvägen. How about you?’ Hurtig picked up a biscuit and dunked it in his coffee. ‘What have you been doing this morning?’

‘I had an interesting conversation with Ivo Andrić. Looks like the boy was full of chemicals.’

‘What?’ Hurtig looked curious.

‘Large amounts of anaesthetic. Injected.’ Jeanette took a deep breath. ‘Probably against his will.’

‘Oh, fuck.’

That afternoon she tried to get hold of Prosecutor von Kwist, but his secretary told her that he was currently in Gothenburg to take part in a debate on television, and that he wouldn’t be back until the next day.

Jeanette went onto the programme’s website and read that the debate was going to be about escalating levels of violence in the suburbs. Kenneth von Kwist, who advocated firm measures and longer sentencing, was expected to attack the previous minister of justice.

On her way out Jeanette stopped off to see Hurtig, and arranged to meet him at ten o’clock at Central Station. They needed to try to talk to some of the children who hung out beneath the bridge as soon as possible.

AT HALF PAST
four the traffic on St Eriksgatan was complete chaos.

The old Audi had cost Jeanette eight hundred kronor for parts and two bottles of Jameson, but she thought it was worth every öre. The car was running like clockwork after Åhlund repaired it.

Tourists from the country, unused to the frantic pace of the capital, were doing their best to share the limited space with the more experienced locals. It wasn’t going terribly well.

Stockholm’s roadways had been constructed during an age when there were far fewer cars, and to be honest it was more suitable for a small town the size of Härnösand than a city with a million inhabitants. The fact that one of the lanes on the Western Bridge was closed for roadworks did nothing to help the situation, and it took Jeanette over an hour to get home to Gamla Enskede. Under more favourable circumstances it took less than fifteen minutes.

As she stepped through the door she almost bumped into Johan and Åke. They were going off to a football match, and were wearing identical shirts and carrying matching green-and-white scarves. They looked confident and expectant, but Jeanette knew from experience that they’d be back in a few hours with all their hopes in ruins.

‘We’re going to win today!’ Åke gave her a quick peck on the cheek, and herded Johan out of the door. ‘See you later.’

‘I probably won’t be here when you get back.’ Jeanette saw Åke’s mood change. ‘I need to go out on a job, I should be back sometime after midnight.’

He shrugged, looked up at the ceiling, then went out to join Johan.

This wasn’t the first time they had met briefly in the doorway, only to part a moment later. Two entirely separate lives under the same roof, she thought. Smiles transformed into looks of disappointment and irritation.

She and Åke. On their way in different directions, with different dreams. More friends than lovers.

Jeanette shut the door after them, kicked off her shoes, and went into the living room, where she threw herself down on the sofa in the hope of getting some rest. In about three hours she’d have to set off again, and hoped she might manage a short nap at least.

Thoughts drifted aimlessly in her head, aspects of the case blurring into practical matters. Grass that needed cutting, letters to be written, interviews to be arranged. She was supposed to be a mum who kept an eye on her child. A woman with the capacity to love and feel desire.

And alongside that she was supposed to have time for her life. Dreamless sleep without any real respite. A short break in the otherwise perpetual motion. A brief period of calm in the lifelong business of moving her body from one place to another.

Sisyphus, she thought.

THE TRAFFIC HAD
thinned out, and as she parked the car she could see from the clock above the entrance to Central Station that it was twenty to ten. She got out of the car, shut the door and locked it. Hurtig was standing by a fast-food stall with a hot dog in each hand. When he caught sight of Jeanette he gave her an almost embarrassed smile. As if he were doing something forbidden.

‘Dinner?’ Jeanette nodded at the impressively large sausages.

‘Here, have one.’

‘Have you seen if there are any of them here?’ Jeanette took the proffered hot dog and gestured towards the Central Bridge.

‘When I got here I saw one of the City Mission’s vans. Let’s go over and have a word.’ He wiped a dribble of sauce from his cheek with a napkin.

They walked past the car park beneath the slip road from Klarastrandsleden, with Tegelbacken and the Sheraton Hotel on the other side of the street. Two different worlds in an area no bigger than a football pitch, Jeanette thought as she caught sight of a group of people in the darkness beside one of the grey concrete pillars.

Twenty or so young people, some of them no more than children, gathered around a van with the City Mission logo on its side.

Some of the children pulled back when they noticed the two new arrivals, vanishing under the bridge.

The two volunteers from the City Mission had nothing useful to tell them. Children came and went, and even though they were there almost every evening, very few of them ever opened up. Just a succession of nameless faces. Some of them went back home, some moved on elsewhere, and a not inconsiderable number of them died.

That was just fact.

Overdoses or suicide.

Money was one problem all the youngsters shared, or rather the lack of it. One of the volunteers told them there were restaurants where the children were occasionally allowed to do the dishes. For a whole day’s work, twelve hours, they got a warm meal and one hundred kronor. The fact that several of the children also provided sexual services came as no surprise to Jeanette.

A girl of about fifteen ventured forward and asked who they were. The girl smiled and Jeanette saw that she had several teeth missing.

Jeanette wondered what to say. Lying about what they were doing there wasn’t a good idea. If she was going to stand any chance of gaining the girl’s trust, it was just as well to say it straight out.

‘My name’s Jeanette, and I’m a police officer,’ she began. ‘This is my colleague Jens.’

Hurtig smiled and held out his hand.

‘Oh. And what do you want?’ The girl looked Jeanette straight in the eyes, giving no indication that she’d noticed Hurtig’s outstretched hand.